So you’re thinking about starting a project with Oracle’s Digital Assistant, but came across this site for adenin Digital Assistant. In this article we have compared them both, and found similarities and differences that could help you decide which one is a better fit for your project.
Product description
Oracle Digital Assistant vs.
Oracle describes their Digital Assistant offering as “providing the platform and tools to easily build AI-powered assistants that connect to your backend applications. A digital assistant uses artificial intelligence for natural language processing and understanding, to automate engagements with conversational interfaces that respond instantly, improve user satisfaction, and increase business efficiencies.”
adenin Digital Assistant
adenin claims their Digital Assistant “continuously scans all of your users business data for updates, and answers questions using Natural Language Processing (NLP). With its Adaptive Cards it can show key information at a glance and offer in-line actions, like approving a request. With dozens of ready-to-use Connectors for business apps like MS Teams, SharePoint or Slack it’s a versatile tool that improves user productivity as it reduces the number of tabs they have to jump in-between”.
Deployment options and pricing
Oracle Digital Assistant vs.
The service is built on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle’s IaaS technology. As with its other cloud services, Oracle manages the platform components in addition to patches, backups and other administrative functions.
There is no free plan. At the time of writing Oracle offers a pay as you go option costing 2.32 cents per request.
adenin Digital Assistant
Digital Assistant comes in three managed plans, Free, Basic and Plus the latter of which tops out at $7 per user. With these adenin handles all the running and updates of the solution.
There are also two self-hosted plans, a free one for developers and a Dockerized one for enterprise use. Uniquely, this plan lets customers run their own AI engine behind the firewall.
For comparison, in the Plus plan adenin charges 0.01166666667 cents per request, equivalent to 99% less than Oracle. (And no, that’s not a misprint.)
Recent updates
Oracle Digital Assistant vs.
Oracle launched ‘Intelligent Bots’ as part of the Cloud Mobile Platform in October 2017 as a way to build conversational, AI-driven interfaces that employees or customers could query through chat tools. Exactly a year later in October 2018 it was relaunched as Oracle Digital Assistant with the ability to link end users to multiple bots, so the emphasis on chatbots remains to this day.
adenin Digital Assistant
Digital Assistant was released in April 2016 as the world’s first AI-powered Assistant for the workplace with the plan to create a new UI that shows the user only the things they needed to see in that moment and none of the webparts/portlets/widgets that traditional Intranets showed you.
Since then we are continuously adding new features to the platform.
Development workflow
Oracle Digital Assistant vs.
Oracle Digital Assistant “supports no-code development that doesn’t require any programming skills or AI expertise, enabling business users to create digital assistants.”
It lets developers “build skills that work with different Oracle applications into one digital assistant for streamlined access to application services” but also “includes a skills catalog where custom-built skills can be saved for reuse and a Skill Store repository that contains skills developed by Oracle.”
adenin Digital Assistant
Adenin is built around the Microsoft Adaptive Card standard and includes a low-code Designer where users can connect to data sources, train the AI and design their Card all in one place.
Adaptive Cards can be consumed by the user in any of the built-in Channels, for example by asking the AI-trained chatbot. Connectors to existing business apps are freely available from the adenin App Directory.
What stands out:
Oracle’s Digital Assistant uses text as the primary input and output; this is in line with their intended use-case of chatbots, but also puts a hard limit on what each chatbot can do.
adenin’s Digital Assistant uses Adaptive Cards, thus expanding the functionality of chatbot responses over plain text. Both solutions offer a repository of integrations, but where Oracle focuses on their own ecosystem, adenin provides a wide range of integrations for different enterprise applications.
Available integrations
Oracle Digital Assistant vs.
When building digital assistants, developers add “skills” that are specific to Oracle applications — for example, its Customer Experience, ERP and HR software applications. Users can interact with the Assistant through the proprietary web chat as part of Service Cloud.
It’s also possible to hand program integrations for other enterprise chat clients, like MS Teams.
adenin Digital Assistant
Digital Assistant is a data-agnostic integration platform, thus it is designed to integrate any data an organization has in the cloud or on-premises.
Users can instantly use Digital Assistant through the web app, as well as any of the available plug-and-play Channels, e.g. MS Teams, Alexa or SharePoint.
What stands out:
Whilst Oracle will have tighter control over the Oracle data it integrates, if you want to show data that isn’t part of the Oracle ecosystem you may face an uphill battle. Primarily, Oracle’s digital assistant only works with Oracle applications and can output responses to a limited number of channels.
Comparatively, adenin’s API-based approach is open and universal; adenin Digital Assistant will happily accept any data you give to it, and display that data on almost any device, app or Intranet site.
In summary
Although at first glance the Digital Assistant offerings from Oracle and adenin appear similar, they are inherently different. Oracle’s Digital Assistant allows businesses to create chatbots for different use-cases, structured around Oracle’s application ecosystem. The service is hosted and managed by Oracle, is accessible via Oracle applications and focuses on creating a conversational interface between Oracle enterprise apps and the end user.
On the other hand, adenin’s Digital Assistant includes chatbot functionality as a feature, not a primary offering. adenin’s Digital Assistant can be accessed across a variety of platforms and devices, provides real-time notifications, actionable Cards and enterprise-wide search, as well as chatbot functionality across a variety of channels; and importantly, it can integrate with almost any business application or data source.
In choosing between these two offerings, it’s important to consider both your current application infrastructure as well as your imagined use-case for your Digital Assistant. Think about what do you want it to help users do, and what you want to achieve overall by implementing a Digital Assistant for the workplace. You can then review our analysis to help you determine the best fit for your business.
